A common occurrence with those who have successfully shed their dieting mentally and have begun eating to satiety is an eventual return of their weight to their pre-yo-yo dieting levels.
This is not just anecdotal– even the participants in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment experienced the same phenomenon. Much of the weight loss that these individuals, including myself, eventually experienced occurred a few months or even years into recovery.
Why Does This Shift in Weight Occur?
What causes the initial weight-gain common in recovery to be followed by this spontaneous return to pre-dieting levels? There are likely many factors at play here, but a key driver seems to be a shift in one’s satiety signals back to pre-dieting levels.
It seems that around this time frame, whether from both a rebalancing of hormones or a recalibration of one’s reward circuitry, “healthy” foods slowly become more appealing. You can see many helpful videos online that illustrate this phenomenon with titles such as “What I Ate in Recovery vs What I Eat now”. The difference between these meals can be quite surprising.
Then Why Not Recover With “Healthy” Foods?
Many see this shift in appetite and think, maybe if I just eat “healthy” from the beginning then I can just avoid all the initial weight gain common with recovery. This is a reasonable assumption; however, in practice, this often doesn’t turn out as we’d hope. It seems that by avoiding your trigger foods during recovery, they retain the power they have over you. The best way out of the grasp of your cravings is to listen and follow them for once.
You can think of recovering from chronic dieting as analogous to escaping a riptide. I think I might of heard this from someone at some point, so if you know where this analogy comes from let me know in the comments so I can give them credit.
Escaping the Riptide of Your Cravings
Most drownings from riptides occur because as humans, our initial instinct is to swim directly against the riptide in the direction of the shore. Fighting this tide, however, can often lead to exhaustion and the eventual drowning for even the most experienced swimmers. Thus, when trapped in a riptide, the advice is to swim or float with the current, even if it takes you out to sea. This seems counter-intuitive, but it’s only by swimming with the riptide that can you eventually escape it – Then and only then, can you finally swim back to shore.
The same can be said about disordered eating. Many of us with binge eating or bulimia have tried for years to fight the urges to binge on “unhealthy” foods only to fail time and time again. We are essentially swimming against the riptide of our cravings. This can leave you completely worn out mentally, physically, and emotionally. It’s only once you listen to these cravings and give up restriction, that you can finally regain control of your appetite and transition to the way you ate before you ever went on a diet.
This analogy extends even further when you consider that once one escapes the riptide and swims parallel to the shore in either direction, they often find the current on the outside of the riptide actually assists them back to shore. The same is true in eating disorder and metabolism recovery: once you gain the rebound weight of recovery, your metabolic current so to speak will be working in your favor. Your diminished hunger and increase in metabolic rate will often result in an effortless return to you pre-disordered eating weight, a.k.a. the shore.
Stage One of Satiety Recovery
For many of those who have successfully recovered, it usually occurs in several phases. The first phase of recovery, which is by far the shortest, involves eating anything and everything that you desire. Many still feel out of control with their eating in this initial stage, and despite it being an important first step to escaping disordered eating, to friends and family, your eating will likely seem more disordered than ever.
A sample meal for me during this initial period of recovery would include something like deep fried pancake mix topped with not just butter and syrup, but all kinds of things including cereal, peanut butter, or even chips. If you don’t have a history of disordered eating this might sound absurd, but as many of my fellow disordered eaters out there can testify, binges like this are very common.
Meals in this stage usual involve odd combinations of foods. In fact, I would say a key indicator of this eating phase is that some of the things you eat would actually seem unappealing to most people.
Stage Two of Satiety Recovery
Just as the foods in phase 1 seem unappealing to “normal” eaters, after some time they will become unappealing to you as well. This is when you know you are entering the second stage of recovery.
Keeping with the theme of pancakes from earlier, during this second stage, the thought of eating deep fried pancakes would make me sick just thinking about it. Rather than all of the additions, during this second stage I would be content eating pancakes with simply butter and syrup.
Ironically, when I was deep into my bulimia, I would never have eaten a normal meal of pancakes. The thought process was, If I can’t eat unlimited pancakes and put everything, I want on them, then it’s not worth it. I imagine many of you can relate.
Stage Three of Satiety Recovery
After a time of eating in phase 2, your food interests will begin to resemble your pre-dieting preferences. This is when you know that you have reached the final stage of eating recovery.
In stage two you would probably eat foods like pancakes or fries for every meal if you had the choice; however, in phase three you will begin to lose the strong inclination and cravings for calorically dense foods.
Before ever dieting, I would eat foods likes pancakes and chips, but I also enjoyed simple foods such as a big salad, lean meat, or fruit just as much. This last stage still includes burgers, milkshakes, and pizza, it’s just that your world doesn’t evolve around those foods.
An Nonconscious Process
What’s important is that the transition between these different satiety stages shouldn’t be a conscious process. For instance, it would be a mistake to assume, I’ve been eating anything I want for a while now, it’s probably time for me to transition eating healthier. This should be an unconscious transition that results from following your appetite.
A Gradual Shift
Lastly, you shouldn’t think of these transitions as discrete changes, as in one month you’re in phase two and then beginning next month you’re in phase three. For instance, your transition from phase two to phase three might start with you simply craving a “healthy” meal one day out of the blue. In that case you would just listen to that craving, and if the next day you want to eat something “unhealthy”, then that’s what you eat. You will find that slowly over time as your satiety hormones recover your desire to eat “healthy” foods will become more and more common.
Even Non-Dieters Experience This Satiety Shift
Growing up I can recall at the end of vacations that involved a lot of eating and restaurants, my mom would often say, “I’m really ready for some home cooked food.” This is an example of that very process going on.
This was my mom’s body saying we’ve been given an abundance of calories from all this heavy food, and thus it’s time to create a desire for lighter food to create homeostasis and balance – This is how normal eaters eat.
The only difference is that after months or years of restrictive dieting, it takes longer than a week of eating calorically dense foods before your body decides that it’s time to eat lighter, less hyperpalatable foods again.
Give Yourself Permission to Eat “Healthy” Foods
Just as there is a tendency to prioritize “clean” foods before your body truly desires them, there is also an equal, yet opposite tendency to doubt one’s newfound desire of “clean” foods when it eventually does arise.
A mistake that many make, including myself initially, is too take their all or nothing mentality into recovery. Most of us are far too familiar of this mentality from our time disordered eating: you “cheated” on your diet one meal and then you think to yourself it’s all ruined, I might as well binge.
If you maintain this rigid mindset in recovery and decide that you’ll only eat “recovery” foods, then you’re eating is still disordered. At each meal, give yourself permission to eat whatever you’re hungry for despite where you are or where you think you should be in recovery.
While caloric refeeding is the key recovering physically, it is only part of the puzzle to recovering mentally. To truly recover mentally you must follow your cravings until they no longer have power over you.
“The best way out is always through” ~Robert Frost
Leave a Reply